It’s been a while since I’ve written much about agile marketing techniques. But this week I had a really fascinating conversation with Satish Jayakumar who got in touch to chat about using agile methodologies for marketing teams and a couple of interesting topics came up. In particular, we talked about how social media activity can fit into an agile marketing plan.

As a quick recap, agile, the project management methodologies adopted by many engineering teams to quickly iterate and deliver many small, value-add projects called stories while working towards an overall milestone. It’s valuable because of the ways it allows developers to test the value proposition of a milestone, deliver more features more often to the rest of the business and manage deadlines and expectations more effectively. I’ve written before about why this style of project management appealed to me as a marketer and how I’ve tried to apply it to marketing teams I’ve worked with.

It’s not hard to see how some marketing campaigns can be broken down into smaller, iterative, value-add steps. An example I always give is that of preparing to attend a conference where small stories might include researching the delegate list (adds value as this can be a list of leads for sales, iterative and a checkpoint as it’s a time to reevaluate the benefits of going to the conference); create marketing collateral to bring to the event (adds value as can be used by the sales team as sales collateral); or submit the founder as a speaker (adds value with promotion of the company, might help the team deprioritize the event if they can’t get on a panel). Here is an example of what this might look like in Pivotal Tracker:

But one question that often comes up is; how do marketers create stories for ongoing marketing activity such as social media? Keeping services like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterst, Google Plus, LinkedIn, etc up to date is a time consuming task and often underappreciated by others in the company. In fact, using an agile approach can not only cater to stories for social media activity, it can drive more value from social media activity overall and help other departments understand social media’s value.

The trick is in having clear milestones – often times these will be the same as marketing campaigns. In the example above, the milestone is “Attend Mobile World Congress” but it could easily be something like, “generate 500 leads from a new territory,” “increase brand awareness among moms by getting 10 placements in press and blogs” or “Increase usage of the new feature by 10%.” These milestones provide the framework for all of the stories in each sprint, and social media should be no exception.

Instead of having social media sit outside of ongoing marketing campaigns, marketers should be looking at how social media can directly enhance each campaign/milestone. In the sample Pivotal Tracker lists I’ve set up, there are the following stories:

Now these are very basic examples, but it suddenly provides a framework for social media activity – it relates directly to a milestone and iterates on previous work (i.e. a delegate list is required before this is possible), provides value (increase Twitter followers, greater awareness of the company before attending, increased opportunities for meetings at the event) and allows for further iteration (people who connect should get a follow up to schedule a meeting at the event itself). It also tests the market. If the team is struggling to generate interest and conversations though social, and getting the sense that the conference audience isn’t right for partnerships or sales opportunities, it might be worth reconsidering how big a priority this event is.

The same concepts can apply for other milestones. Instead of having part of the marketing team focus on a campaign to, say, generate leads from a new territory, while the social media manager carries on with general account promotion and content, the visibility provides through agile project management allows the teams to work together – with the social media manager focusing content creation and follower acquisition solely in that new territory.

It’s basic stuff but quite powerful – instead of social being a stand-alone chore that has to be maintained week on week, social stories should fit under each milestone; providing a test market for campaign ideas and messaging, feeling out new sales leads, supporting a PR campaign, engaging experts or attracting followers that are being targeted by other marketing activity.

If you are trying to do agile marketing, and find yourself creating a story called “Do social media” and tagging it as a chore, take a closer look at your milestones and campaigns and make your social efforts part of the storyboard. Your social media team will feel more involved, drive greater value and other departments will instantly see how social media can contribute to the overall marketing efforts week on week.

As many PC users may have noticed, the Google Play Store has undergone a massive update to its layout and design. The old version of the Play Store did have its issues. Poor navigation, limited access to subcategories, difficulty in discovering free apps and over-reliance on editor’s choices (problems not dissimilar to other app stores, by the way) made it difficult to discover new and useful applications.

The homepage itself actually seems to include a number of solutions to the problems that plagued the old Play Store.

A recommended section is forefront, rather than hidden away, helping users discover apps that are more relevant to their personal preferences and use cases. There are also a greater number of categories on the home page, rather than just editors picks and top downloads. Now, new groupings of apps, including Movie Apps, Communication, Personalisation and Apps to Watch. A greater number of apps now appear on the homepage increasing exposure for developers. There are fewer display characters for app titles, a change which may impact how some developers have named their apps, but overall the homepage looks like a step in the right direction.

Yet for all of the improvements in navigation and discover-ability, there is a hugely critical flaw with the new Play Store design – and that is the updated individual app page.

From my point of view as an app creator, here are a few of the problems:

– G+ recommendations no longer show at the top of the page. A few hundred ticks of social proof seem to have disappeared with the new G+ button at the top.

– New layout for screenshots is ungainly and unattractive, and developers with less than 6-7 screenshots will need to rethink that real estate.

– Additional information, which previously sat alongside the description and made it easy for users to see number of installs (social proof), device compatibility, rating and file size are now almost hidden at the very bottom of the page.

– Reviews are displayed in an ad-hoc, almost Pinterest-style next to the star rating. This alone isn’t a huge problem but one of the Play Store’s greatest features was that it allowed developers to respond to reviews on their app page, indicating both a solution for previous issues and an involved support team. These responses have now vanished unless you click on the reviews themselves. Likewise, the ability to rate reviews for their usefulness is hidden too.

Overall the new layout seems to provide less information in a larger amount of space while diminishing the importance of developer involvement.

Besides the new design changes, the rollout of these Google Play Store updates seems to have introduced quite a few bugs. While we can expect these will be dealt with swiftly, expect some issues if you decide to take a look at the new Play Store.

What are the takeaways for app creators?

There are a few important steps app creators should take right away.

1) Do a search for your app. In search results, has your app’s name been truncated by the new title length restrictions? You may need to update your app title.

2) Check your app screenshots. Do you have enough to make the page look nice? You may need to add some new screenshots to the page.

3) Check your app description. The new Play Store is currently experiencing a number bugs that are affecting font and style, particularly if you previously had any special characters in your app description. You may need to remove those characters (like stars or bullet points) to get the description to display correctly.

4) Get familiar with the new Play Store layout. This may be your app’s new home for quite a while, regardless of how you feel about the layout, so it’s worth taking a look!

Yesterday I spoke at the App Promotion Summit, the first event of its kind to bring together app developers, marketers, promotion agencies and networks to discuss how to effectively drive app downloads and engagement.

I was invited to give an overview of the app store landscape, covering the obvious (such as the App Store and Play Store) but also the less well-known (such as Opera Apps and Amazon App Store). I also provided some insight into how 23snaps got featured in the App, Play and Windows Stores, and how other apps could position themselves for featured placement opportunities.

In my previous role at Spoonfed Media Ltd, I undertook a project to migrate the team one CRM to another, administer the system and train the team on the new system. I learned a ton about how the right or wrong CRM can make a big difference in a small company and wanted to share a couple of comments.

Our team made the decision to migrate from Zoho CRM to Salesforce for three primary reasons. Important metrics were inaccessible to key decision makers, our talented top-performers were doing repetitive tasks and we were missing out on sales opportunities because customers did not get responses quickly enough.

In a small company, there may not be a specialized data analysis team so the CRM needs to make it easy and quick to view key metrics. Fewer people means that the more automated processes, the better, otherwise top staff might end up doing data entry or data cleansing. Finally, limited man hours in the day means that without powerful tools in the CRM to either auto-respond to customers, auto-assign leads or quickly qualify sales opportunities will mean missed sales opportunities or time spent on the wrong opportunities.

The impact of switching to Salesforce was dramatic. Reporting tools allowed us to determine critical metrics including total revenue, customer lifetime value and churn rate, making us more efficient in our spending. Talented recruits who previously focused on data maintenance spent more time analysis, a more satisfying and productive role. And automated processes improved our response time for new prospects from days to minutes, significantly increasing the likelihood of a sale.

For your small business, consider the following when deciding on a CRM:
– How accessible is your data
– How robust are the data management tools, and can they reduce man-hours spent in the system
– Can marketing be automated to improve response times and sales

If your CRM isn’t checking out against those three points, it might be time to consider a switch.

I love my job and working with technology companies and later today, I get the chance to share that experience with a group of Girl Guides (that’s Girl Scouts for the Americans).

Mobile apps and careers related to mobile are becoming increasingly important, relevant and lucrative as the industry grows. The mobile apps are expected to generate $25 billion in sales this year alone (Wall Street Journal, March 2013).

However, with more than a billion apps available for download for smartphones, companies need people who can help them stand out in a crowded market. They need people who understand where to target advertising, how to attract downloads and how to acquire users that stick around (and ideally pay money).

In addition to explaining what I do, I’ve also been asked to put together an activity that helps the girls understand how my job works. I thought the activity I prepared might be useful for other groups that want to introduce girls, teens, students or young people in general to the ideas behind how mobile apps get promoted and make money. This activity is aimed at getting teens to think about where they might place adverts for different mobile apps, in order to encourage the most relevant people to download their app – at the best price.

Want to use this activity for your group? Download the activity sheets here:

About

Meaghan Fitzgerald is an entrepreneur, marketer for early-stage companies and previously head of marketing and operations at London-based 23snaps. A Silicon Valley native, she started her first company, DormWise, in 2006 which she later sold in 2009. Meaghan writes here about business, technology, mobile, marketing and agile project management. She has been named a top 30 under 30 woman in digital and is a Nokia Remarkable Woman.